Sunday Homily, July 24, 2016, 17th Sunday Ordinary Time

Readings: Amos 8, 4-7; Psalm 113, Praise the Lord who lifts up the Poor; 1 Timothy 2, 1-8; Luke 16, 1-13

 

Luke’s Gospel, 3 observations:

 

1.  The Story.  The rich man and his steward.  The steward is  squandering the rich man’s property.  The rich man tells the steward that he is going to be fired after he prepares the accounts. 

 

 

The steward figures he will make friends with the debtors by cutting their debts to the rich man.  He cuts bills as much as 50%. 

 

 

The rich man, instead of berating the steward, praises him for his strategy.  

2.  What is going on here?  Looks like the steward is stealing from the rich man.   In fact, he is cutting out his commission, not stealing anything.  The Jews reading this parable would know this immediately.  The steward made his living by charging a service fee. 

 

3.  Any lessons here for us?

  a.  One of Luke’s favorite messages: Our God is merciful.  See the Prodigal Son & Good Samaritan.  The rich man praises the steward for being ingenious.

  b.  We are challenged to be equally ingenious.  Use our talents.

 

Extra point: watch out for taking a hit from the sayings at the end, trustworthiness, dishonesty in little things, 2 masters.  There might be a trap here: either/or spirituality. 

 

 

Sources:

Francis Vanderwall, The Liberating Stories of Jesus, chapter 4;

New Interpreter's Study Bible;

New American Bible, on line;

St. Louis U., The Center for Liturgy, on line

 

 

We Need a Mediator to Ransom Us?

 

 

Many of you know that this old geezer loves to dance.  In fact, it was through dancing that Rosemary & I met.  I was looking for the best dancer.

 

 

For the past year or more I have not been able to dance because I could not swing my hips or swivel.  For the past month or at least since I finished the Hotter ‘N Hell Hundred, I have had it in mind that I would like to return to dancing, probably at some special event. 

 

 

The event took place last weekend at the wedding we did in Ashville, NC, for a girl very dear to me.  It was Friday night.  We had finished the rehearsal and gone to a bar-b-que place for the dinner. 

 

 

We returned to the hotel and what they call The Great Hall, the big stone lobby.  Playing dance music was a 3 piece group and a lady singer.  I had thought the wedding reception would be the fitting place to make our dancing debut.  But suddenly that Great Hall, the presence of others from the wedding, and the mood of the place made it the moment. 

 

 

We danced.  I could do it.  It was exhilarating.  Like getting back on a bicycle after a long lay off.  To top it off, the lady singing even complimented us by saying, “Good dancing.”  I was quite touched.

 

 

I talk about this event because I want to tie it into a line in Timothy that says more or less, “There is one mediator who gave himself as ransom for all.”

 

 

My Question: Do we need someone to ransom us?  Ransom us from what?  Did Emma need to be ransomed when we baptized her?  What about Chloe or Zoe or Georgie or Sam or Sean?

 

 

Many of us have been trained to think that we come into this life stained, imperfect, in fact, sinful, not because of anything we did.  But because some distant ancestors, Adam & Eve, sinned and we all inherit it.  If the baby was not baptized and the sin removed, it would go to where?  Not

hell, not heaven.  Limbo.

 

 

 

Folks, what if there is no limbo?  The Catholic Church now says it was just a concept, not a reality.  Go further.  What if we don’t need to be ransomed from anything?  What if there really is no original sin?  That when we see a little baby and think how good it is, our perception is 100% accurate. 

 

 

Biblical scholars and students of the history of religion are now suggesting that, just like Limbo, original sin is a concept thought up to explain imperfect behavior.  If this is so, could it be that none of us is in need of some kind of ransom?

 

 

That lady singer complimenting us on our dancing in The Great Hall was another glimpse into the goodness of people.  The wedding was overflowing with the goodness.  Parents, the marvelous couple, little kids, and even some old geezers.  No need for ransom there.

 

 

And if we don’t need to be ransomed, where does that leave us?

 

 

Picture 1:   Beginning of Mass

 

 

Picture 2:   Emily with her mom, Julie

 

 

Picture 3:   Communion preparation

 

 

Genesis 18:  "Please, let not my Lord grow angry if I speak up this last time.  What if there are at least ten there?"  He replied, "For the sake of those ten, I will not destroy  it."

Colossians 2:  You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.

Luke 11:  "And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

 

                     

Denni reading from Genesis
 

Thanks…     

Music,   Ben  & Shonda

Tom reading from St. Paul's Letter to the Colossians

The Kiss of Peace

 

Outreach: $   220.00

Thanks again, Folks, for doing what you can.

 

Candice, Buddy, Claire and Ray

 

Rosemary's Blessing:

Sorry for the delay.  We thought we had sent this out. 

Welcome Home Special Sunday for Mary Ellen

Readings:

Acts 9,  26-31,  The Church was at peace.

Psalm 22,    I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people.

1 John 3, 18-24,   Let us love not in word or speech, but in deed and truth.

 John  15, 1-8,  I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.  A metaphor, the vine and the branches.

 

                           Brooklyn says, "Hi, Everybody, Welcome in."

Acts reminders:

Author: Luke, the same who wrote the gospel.  He was an educated, urbane Jew.

Date: the years 75-80 

Subject: This is a travel log, detailing the spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome and the Mediterranean in between.

Today: Paul is the subject of this week's selection.  It describes how the community in Jerusalem was initially scared of Paul.

 

            Genevieve says, "Hello, Everybody, Nice to see you again.  I gained 1                             pound since last Sunday, now 7 pounds."

 

Love not in word or speech?

The line in today’s readings that caught my attention was in the letter from John.  Let us love not in word or speech, but in deed and truth.  I have no problem with showing love in deed.  But I have a problem with discounting the impact of words of appreciation and love. 

An example.

It was probably 1988-89.  My mom was still living in the house on Tulip Lane, where Rosemary & I now live.  My sister had not yet moved in to be with my mom.  I was just back from East Africa for about a year and a half.  I was living at Jesuit & working on Lemmon Avenue at the Pastoral Counseling Center.   My mom would die in 2-3 years.  

 

                    Our Candle Lighters, Emma and Genevieve.

My mom and I are in the car. I am driving.  Mom has an appointment at Dedman Hospital, LBJ around Marsh on the north side.   I don’t know what for, but she was going to spend a night or two.

I am driving west on LBJ.  At some point, my mom pats me on the right leg and says to me, “I’m proud of you.” 

 

                                    Sisters, Sienna and Brooklyn

 

Folks, I am about 48, almost 50 years old.  I have spent 30 years in the Jesuits living all over the place.  I have even just spent 10 years in East Africa and survived quite well.  That spoken compliment from my mom really moved me.  I can see the scene and feel the emotion just as strongly today as ever. 

Spoken compliments, spoken words of thanks, spoken “I love you’s” are so powerful.  They give life and they give inner peace. 

 

        Anybody around here have a Kentucky Derby Bonnet?  Harper says,                                     "Check out my Grandmother."

When was the last time you thanked somebody, complimented them, or told them you love them?

 

                             The Team, Mom (Michelle), Georgie, and Buddy.

Readings:  Isaiah 5, 1-7; Psalm 80; Philippians 4, 6-9; Matthew 21, 33-43. 

Isaiah:

• The biggest of the big 3 prophets not only because of the book's volume, 66 chapters, but because of the beauty of some passages. 

• Time written: before the Babylonian Captivity (ca. 590) chapters 1-39 seem to have been composed by the prophet.  After the Captivity (ca. 540) at least two followers seem to have composed chapters 40-66.

• Today's selection: talks about a vineyard worker who labors carefully to bring forth good grapes, but gets only weeds.  What does he do with the vines?  This story matches up with Matthew's parable.

The Parable of the Landowner with a Vineyard

Sometimes I encounter a parable that I find really difficult to understand.  This is one of them.  I wonder why the landowner would send his son to the tenants after twice they had killed his servants when they went to collect the produce. 

Obviously, as in the case of all parables, we are faced with multiple layers of symbolism.  Of course, the landowner represents Yahweh.  The tenants are the Jewish people.  Remember Matthew is writing both to Jews and Gentiles. He is warning the Jews that they are going to lose their preferential place in Yahweh's plan if they do not accept Jesus as The Savior. 

The son is Jesus, the savior, the man the Jews criticized and condemned to death.  But why would He send his son? 

I have one story about this that gave me an insight into the mind set of Yahweh and Matthew's intention with the parable.  You may have heard me tell the story three years ago, but it is all I got even to this day.

It concerns a red oak I planted years ago on the corner of Willow Lane and Inwood.  This is the south eastern corner of the Jesuit property.  I had just started planting trees in Dallas.  It may have been fall of '87 or fall of '88.  I planted a whole row of trees on both Inwood and Willow, edging the campus. 

On the Inwood side of the corner is a bus stop and students from various schools used to catch the bus there.  The winter after I planted the five gallon red oak, it was pulled out and thrown away.  I replanted.  Later in the year it was pulled out and thrown in the creek again.  I was hurt, mad, and especially frustrated because it was the tree on the very corner, Willow side.  It one day would shade the bus stop, in fact.

I waited.  I reflected.  Eventually I decided to plant again in the fall, but this time I was going to plant a tree two times the size and two times the cost.  I thought, 'maybe the kids will respect the bigger tree.  I really hoped to have a nice tree some day shading the people waiting for the bus. 

So I planted.  And waited some more.  Today a beautiful red oak shades the people waiting for the bus.  It is almost twenty years old.  

The parable of the landowner presents the man as somewhat idiotic but also ready to take revenge on the tenants who killed his servants and son.  I think I see two levels of symbolism.

On one level the landowner represents Yahweh who has, first, tried to deal reasonably with the tenants.  Then, secondly, Matthew indicates that Yahweh will put the wretched laborers to a wretched end, meaning the Jews are going to get it.

I see a second level of symbolism, which maybe Matthew did not intend.  The landowner who seems so idiotic represents a Yahweh who is truly idiotic.  But he is idiotic over his people because He loves them.  We are his people.  We are the tenants.   

My experience with the tree showed me that I can do idiotic things to make our place a better place to live in.  I was fortunate. 

What is your image of our God?

AUDIO: sorry, none today.

 

 

Readings:

Samuel 16, 1-13,   Samuel anointed David.

Psalm 23,  The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want.

Ephesians  5, 8-14,  You were once darkness, but now you are light.

John  9, 1-41,  As Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth.

 

 

Mike's Homily:

Jesus perceived that a man who was begging had been blind from birth.  So, he replies to his disciples that they must do the work of the one who has sent him. The work that the Father has given his Son is to proclaim the good news, the Father’s plan of salvation. 

Jesus perceived by what the beggar has said or did not say, by what he was doing or was not doing, that the beggar was spiritually blind; he had never heard the good news of Jesus Christ that gives spiritual light to the world.

 

 

Jesus makes some clay and anoints the beggar’s eyes to make us aware that the beggar is about to become a new creation.  Recall from the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah that God is the potter and that man is formed by Him.  Jesus says to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam which means sent.  

To understand this command, the reader must return two chapters, to the Feast of Tabernacles at the pool of Siloam where gushing, spring fed living waters flowed into and were sent out from of this pool.

 

 

 

 

These living waters are a metaphor for the good news of Jesus Christ, for He had called out on the greatest, and last day of the feast, the only day when waters were not drawn from the pool, ‘Come to me if you are thirsty, for from my heart flows living waters.’  Jesus had sent the man to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, so that he could send him forth living and proclaiming the good news. 

So, the beggar returned to the temple no longer unclean; he had been enlightened and the Spirit dwelled within him.   Of course, the Pharisees who said that they could spiritually see, but reject the good news, remain blind. 

 

 

Today’s reading purposely sends us back to the earlier reading of what happened at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles to another very similar parable.  The scribes and the Pharisees bring a woman who was caught in the act of adultery to Jesus, saying to him, ‘Moses commanded that such a woman should be stoned.  What do you say?’    The scribes and the Pharisees were the teachers of the Law.

They knew the oral and written tradition that required them to bring both the man and the woman accused of committing adultery, and at least two witnesses to Jesus, if they were seeking a judgment from him; but their intention was to discredit Jesus. 

Now, during the feast of Tabernacles, the oral tradition required the high priest, as he cleansed himself in the waters of the pool of Siloam, to say from the prophet Jeremiah, ‘those who reject the Lord, the fountain of living waters, will in shame have their names written in the earth. 

 

 

So when Jesus knelt down in front of them, he began writing the names, the most prominent first, of these scribes and Pharisees who had rejected the fountain of living waters, his life-giving good news.  Shamed, for they understood what Jesus was doing, they left the people, the woman and Jesus, the oldest to the youngest, when Jesus said to them, ‘Let the one among you who is without sin, cast the first stone.’  

After the woman acknowledges to Jesus that there is no one left to condemn her, he says to her, ‘go away,’ [better, go along the way believing the good news] and sin no more.  She too had been sent forth. 

In like manner each of us has been sent forth with and from the living waters. 

From whom did you receive or give a drink of that living water this past week?

 

Readings: Isaiah 53,10-13; Psalm 33, Lord, let Your Mercy be on Us, as We place Our Trust in You; Hebrews 4, 14-16; Mark 10, 35-45

Isaiah:

A review:

  

Authors: at least 3 because there are 3 distinct parts to Isaiah the book. 

  

Time of Composition: near the end of the Babylonian Captivity, i.e., ca. 550 BCE.

 

   

Subject Matter: warnings about impending doom because of the badness of the people in part 1 up to chapter 39.  The remaining two parts are called the Book of Consolation, letting the people know that a more peaceful & prosperous time is coming. 

   

Today’s Selection:  (read all of chapter 53) 4 observations—

A. This chapter in 2 Isaiah is not included as one of the 4 Suffering Servant Songs, though it presents the same theme. 

  

B. The he, the servant that is talked about is

   –for the Hebrews, the Jewish nation/people;

   –for Christians, Christ.

   

C.  False Belief number 1?  The Jews thought Yahweh demanded suffering or sacrifice of valuable items ( e.g., sacrificial lamb ) as payment for badness. 

 

D.  False Belief number 2?  Not for the first 200 years, but eventually Christians were taught to believe that an original great sin had been committed by our ancestors & that sin could only be paid for by a human-divine hero, Jesus.  He had to be sacrificed to this god.  Or as the first line of our official reading says, “The lord was pleased to crush him infirmity.”  Do you think God really crushes people with infirmity?

Was there really an original sin?  Contemporary theology says no. 

 

   

The Greatest

 

August, 2007, there was an article in the N.Y. Times.  It focused on a work called Come, Be My Light, a collection of letters by Mother Teresa.  I mentioned Mother Teresa last week as an example of a person who gave it all up and went out into the street to help the disadvantaged.  Why did she do this?  Apparently because of her faith in Jesus and his message.  The N.Y. Times article, however, noted that Mother Teresa confesses in her letters that for years she harbored doubts about her belief in God, this while she was rescuing homeless people off of the streets, living out the role of servant mentioned in the gospel. 

 

I mention this event because despite people's accomplishments, we are all human, and because many of us have the similar doubts.  Mother Teresa got a lot of criticism for these doubts, people even calling her a fraud or hypocrite.  I would propose that she was more genuine because of her doubts.

 

Two observations that seem relevant to this issue.  The observations come from an excellent book, The Future of Faith by Harvey Cox (loaned to me by John Cade). Cox has been teaching divinity at Harvard for 40 years and wrote the famous Secular City in '65.  The observations are, first, a short history of Christianity and, secondly, where is Mother Teresa and where are we.  

 

 

 

First, Cox says there have been three stages of Christianity, the stage of faith, the stage of belief, and the stage of the spirit.  

 

He suggests that we have been living in the third stage for the past 50 or more years.  It is characterized by a desire on the part of many people to become spiritual.  Not necessarily religious with all the rules and dogmas.  This period is reflective of the first stage. 

 

The Age of Faith lasted around two hundred years after Jesus.  During this time there was a spiritual excitement about the prospect of a new world coming.  Jesus called it the kingdom and it was a this world event.  There were many little Christian communities, a variety of liturgies, a democratic process, and an anti Roman Empire stance.  There was a sense of being touched by the spirit of Jesus, with his vision for a better world where the poor and outcast would be welcomed. 

 

Despite an excitement of spirit, the time was marked by persecution.  The Roman Empire did not tolerate groups of people who would not worship the emperor.  It was during this time when the Christians were the entertainment in the Colosseum.

 

The second stage, the Age of Belief, officially begins in 313, when the emperor Constantine granted freedom to Christians. Fairly quickly Christianity became the religion of the empire.  Sounds good so far.  But as Cox notes, when the Empire made Christianity official, Christianity became an empire and lost much of its spirit.  Faith was measured by belief in dogmas, belief in things about Jesus. 

 

A clerical class developed, the class became rich and powerful, they began to lay down beliefs that had to be held, writings were revised so as to create a fiction to support apostolic succession so these clerics would appear entitled.  Creeds multiplied.  Only 12 years after Constantine's Edict of Milan of 313, a council of Christian leaders, now called bishops, met at Nicaea in 325 and came up with the complicated Nicene Creed.

 

In 385 CE a particularly ominous event took place.  For the first time ever a meeting of bishops, condemned of heresy and had killed 7 Christian men.  The group under the leadership of a man named Priscillian encouraged abstinence from meat & wine, recommended study of the sacred writings available to them, and allowed what could be called charismatic praise of God. 

 

So where are we and where was Mother Teresa?  I was born about 30 years after Mother Teresa, but she & I both were brought up in the Age of Belief.  I had to memorize the Baltimore Catechism.  The more I memorized, the more faith I must have.  I don't think Mother Teresa ever moved totally out of the Age of Belief.  However, her life exemplifies the Way of Faith 

 

 

Today I find lots of Catholics & Christians, like myself, trying to return to that original time of faith & spirit.  Dogmas like the infallibility of the pope, the Assumption, the Immaculate Conception, & canon law are not vital.  A spirituality that deepens faith is vital.

 

Where are you on this journey?

 

Source: The Future of Faith, Harvey Cox (excellent)

 

Picture 1:  Mass begins with Kevin helping

 

Picture 2:  Sebastian welcomes the Community

 

Picture 3:  The Community

 

Picture 4:  The Coffee Shoppe with Joan & Jerry, Bob & John